Chapter 1 - prologue

Gulp. Gulp. Gulp. Gulp.

May tilted her can of Coke a little more vertically as her throat opened a little wider to finish off its last dregs. After a little shake to make sure she’d gotten the very last drop out, she plunked it down on the table, satisfied, as she held her now-rumbling tummy for a moment.

“You know you shouldn’t drink that much soda.”

May’s best friend Macey looked on with a disapproving eyebrow as May cradled her round little belly and visibly stifled a belch. Even with this mild act of propriety, Macey could still hear the deep rumble in her friend’s diaphragm as the camouflaged “urrrp” rattled through her ribcage.

May and Macey had been friends for almost two decades now. High-school study partners turned into college roommates and now two single gals living and working together to manage the excruciatingly high rent in San Francisco.

The pair had always made an interesting sight: May was a towering, pale string-bean of a woman, just brushing against six-feet tall, with an evenly proportioned, sinewy frame. She had modest B-Cup breasts that sat on a flat (though now distended) stomach, widening out into thin but still somehow substantial hips and long legs that then narrowed into delicate ankles.

Macey on the other hand was a chubby 5’1, with voluptuous breasts that, due to her size, looked impressive in both relative and absolute terms. Underneath her eye-catching bust, however, her body rounded out into fit-to-burst curves; a plump belly that she’d grown in tenth grade and never been able to shake and a behind that swelled out in two extremely well-rounded globes that shimmied and shook noticeably as she moved. And whereas May was tall, pale, with mousy dirty-blond hair, Macey’s mixed Ashkenazi-Puerto Rican roots gave her ruddy brown skin, vibrant freckles, and a curly explosion of thick black hair that only added to an external perception of sensuousness.

But whereas Macey had always struggled with her weight and, a general air of body positivity aside, she managed her food and drink intake carefully. May, long a “skinny fat” girl with no physical fitness to speak of, but a seemingly invincible metabolism, was her general foil in all things food and fitness: her irresponsibly lackadaisical approach to her health and weight never ceased to inflame the skinny-fat dynamic of their friendship.

Decades of little pokes and prods from Macey to be more respectful landed on deaf ears with May. Naivete and obviousness combined to make her a minor but frequent source of frustration to her best friend, especially in moments like this.

May stifled another burp and looked with wide, unassuming eyes at her friend.

“What, why?”

Macey pinced the bridge of her nose.

“Come on, dude, that shit is toxic. I hate policing others’ bodies and eating, but I just think that stuff is so bad for you. Practically anything is better than that stuff.”

She looked at May’s belly again, still rumbling and a little distended

May smiled and replied: “I know, I know, but it’s just such a release. I take pretty good care of myself overall!”

Her eyes moved over the half-eaten bag of chips on their coffee table, but decided internally that grabbing a few would attract too much unwanted attention in this moment.

Macey rolled her eyes and thought of the number of times she’d seen her friend sneak “just a little snack” over the weekend alone. A muffin after a full English breakfast on Saturday, a venti chocolate frappuccino after their friend Ashley’s lusciously catered wedding shower on Sunday, and now her third can of Coke today alone, and they were still waiting for their takeout to arrive. And then there were her activity levels: the “skinny fat” phrase, while hardly kind, readily applied to her lanky friend. Despite her size, she had a cellulite-ridden, cottage cheese ass and thighs, given her utter lack of muscles and definition and was overall inclined to sit and eat, or play videogames, given the opportunity.

It was easy enough to justify, as two single thirty-something women in San Francisco their social world was trending inwards, with friends getting married and the dating scene increasingly feeling like some particularly cruel version of the Truman Show. So, they spent a lot more time at home, both for their (thankfully remote) jobs as senior investment analysts at the he California Public Employees Retirement System (colloquially known as “CalPERS”) and the time they spent resting from said jobs.

For Macey, this time at home was mostly welcome. Despite an ability to conjure a vivacious presence at a social interaction when called upon, she was, for all intents and purposes, a quiet, private nerd. Outside of her intellectually stimulating work in investment, where she was proud both to be a woman of colour in the field, and generally good at the ins and outs of impact-oriented venture capital, she liked her life fundamentally simple. Her focuses were primarily books, crafts, and gentle videogames and she was, with only occasional begrudgement, happy to let May occupy some of her space so long as most of their time was of a “parallel play” nature.

In contrast, May was fundamentally companionable and constantly sought intimate time with her close friends. Bubbly but still quite shy, Macey provided a helpful social anchor, as she had for most of her adult life. While she was undoubtedly attractive to many, she was still the ‘wrong’ type of skinny to have ever been fully taken in as one of the beautiful people that might have set her on an entirely different life path. A warm, happy person by nature, May’s somewhat goofy and naive persona sometimes overshadowed her sharp, mathematical mind. While the basics of diet and exercise continuously eluded her, her “quant” status in the investment world and corresponding ability to chart a dividend curve and crunch the believability and risk profile of a term-sheet were nigh unparalleled in their office at CalPERS. She and Macey regularly traded commendations from the senior leadership for their insight and value to the team. And yet, domain excellence aside, the idea that there would be consequences to her irresponsible lifestyle was utterly inconceivable and unworthy of attention.

Having tried to honour her friend’s warning for too long, the lanky lush finally couldn’t resist and snaked a hand into the chip bag.

At that moment, something broke inside Macey. Decades of trying to steward not only her own weight but obliquely trying to help a friend who, despite all her genetic luck, seemed dead-set on squandering it on a lifestyle that would eventually catch up to her.

The chubby woman’s shoulders sank -- her heavy bust resting more pronouncedly on her belly as her back hunched over -- as she watched her friend’s attention wander back to her snack from the conversation, smiling one last time warmly before totally ignoring the advice given to her.

Fine. If she wants to really let herself go, I’m done trying to baby her.

She pressed the full chip bag to her friend and turned back to her phone.

Before she got fully wrapped back up in the saucey fan fiction she was reading, she heard one final subdued rumble from her friend -- between crunches -- and shook her head.